Do you recall those slight times that stretch out indefinitely, when half-toned grey dissolves walls into a mass of moveable atoms?
Yes, this time. I’m sick with red and green eyelid flashes and the faint feeling that if I don’t sleep before the sun rises, the sun shall never rise.
Three minutes drag on like a transatlantic flight.
You know, I used to suppose that everywhere was the same at 3:48 A.M. I thought that somehow, no one could possibly experience that point in time except for silent coffeepots and clock-faces. And now, now I can imagine the sun blazing its way across the ocean, held aloft by some violent idea of tearing open the coastline. And I can see people writing letters in Europe to people asleep in America, saying How are you? Wish you were here! while their recipients lie, heartbeats slowed, the refrigerator hum the only expectant sound in the house.
I join the appliances in the worn out, wide awake hibernation. I endure it, watching the atoms mobilize, shiver, and compose into mirrors, shutters, walls and sockets.
Nothing to think about shall catch me unawares.
I lie awake and dreaming.